Tag: authors behaving badly

So here I am, sitting at my desk and scanning Facebook when I should be doing … well, just about anything else. My to-do list is long and only going to get longer if I don’t knock a few items off of it. Then I see the post. In big white letters on a red background is the message “Have you seen me?” Under that is a picture of a teenage girl. Below that is a line with a single word, “MISSING” screaming at me in red. A few more details (“blah, blah, blah”) are outlined after that. I start thinking: Continue reading “Missing? Don’t Market Your Book This Way”

We’ve had posts about critique groups before. These groups can be very helpful to writers if they are balanced and the members show mutual support and respect. Until recently that’s how it’s been for me. Members respected each other and genuinely tried to provide constructive feedback, trusting that it came with good intentions. This keeps groups working together without rancor.

I’ve had to ask myself a question recently: why on earth do I bother reviewing books? Actually, I know why I started to … it coincided with the purchase of my Kindle. I fancied an anthology of my opinions and what I thought of all the books I read on it because I thought the advent of digital books was quite a Big Thing. So, wait … let me rephrase that: the behaviour of authors has made me ask myself the question. Continue reading “What Do Authors Want from a Review/Reviewer?”

One of my recent posts concerned a very public tantrum from an author unhappy that a book blogger didn’t like her book. In the comments of that post Lynne Cantwell theorized that reviewers were subjected to a lot of bad author behavior that never went public. She’s right. I’ll be quick to add that in my recent experience bad behavior is the exception, even when giving a negative review. I’ve had several authors email to say they’d had their book re-edited or proofed again, neglected to send me an updated copy, and that getting dinged on the review for a less than stellar job on the version we received was justified. I’ve had authors email to say my complaints were valid and they were using my feedback to up their game in the future. Authors who do their homework have figured out that a public fight with a reviewer never turns out well.

However, as Lynne posited, this doesn’t mean authors no longer react in inappropriate ways to bad reviews. This post is the story of one such recent experience of mine. Continue reading “More on Author Behavior”